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Indexable IDX Questions

By Jeff Corbett

Real Estate Technology with BoomTown

January 26, 2010 02:45 AM

There has been much buzz about Indexable IDX plug-ins for real estate blogsites…

First things first…Why is this a big deal to begin with? IDX solutions are typically framed in to web/blogsites and offer little to no SEO value. An indexable IDX effectively creates separate posts for every listing, thus creating GOBS of real estate and general property related content that the Search Engines can’t help but crawl all over and index.

In theory, indexable IDX’s should subsequently send copious relevant organic traffic to a site that has implemented such a plug-in.

As far as I can tell Jason Benesch from The Real Estate Tomato pioneered an open source WordPress plug-in (ListingPress) that spurred further development by a handful of other tech vendors that I also highly respect, like Diverse SolutionsdsIDXpress (Press Release).

The idea seems great in theory…as said, plug it in and instantly create a ton of crawlable property data for your real estate web/blogsite. If you are first in your market with one of these churning inside your site, there would appear to be a distinct SEM advantage.

So, I was having a conversation with some Housechick and this subject of Indexable IDX’s came up. Being she knows a thing or three about IDX’s and SEM, the obvious question was thrown out:

‘What happens when multiple people/sites in the same market implement such a tool?’

Does the SEO value evaporate, since everyone will effectively have the same content?
Do the mysterious Duplicate Content theories come into play, and as a result does Google and the other Search portals penalize sites for such?
Which site running the same Indexable IDX ranks better? Is this where a higher PageRank becomes more than a bragging right and effectuates results for higher ranking on SERP’s?
Is there a way to differentiate the content via novel implementation methods, result formats, or other such tweakery?
Is one Indexable IDX different from another (not from a functionality standpoint, rather strictly from an SEO perspective)?

Kelley and I speculated for a bit with no real conclusions, just educated guesses…so I called Google and am still on hold.

While I’m waiting, I ask the rest of the community: As adoption of indexable IDX’s reaches a certain saturation point by market, does the current innate SEO value diminish, evaporate, or worse? Thoughts?

Originally posted on TheXBroker 1/26/10

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Maureen McCabe

HER Realtors - Columbus, OH

Columbus Ohio Real Estate

Gee I want Jay Thompson's blog traffic... I came from a tweet about his stats being questioned... or his intergrity. I was ignoring this post although I read it when it was first published. I am in a market where we are supposed to link to our brokers IDX.... so as interesting as this is...

Jan 30, 2010 02:49 AM

Jeff Corbett

BoomTown - Charleston, SC

'Just for the record, Jay is one of the most straight up, transparent and honorable guys on RE.net.'

Word.

Apparently all the new people on the net last month missed my blog, dammit.

Jan 30, 2010 02:55 AM

Lane Bailey

Century 21 Results Realty - Suwanee, GA

Realtor & Car Guy

My own thoughts (not worth the two cents) are that the first movers may see a value from the indexed IDX. After a while, it might not matter as much, but they will still be better to have than framed IDX... I want to have my IDX indexed...

Jan 30, 2010 02:45 PM

Lee & Pamela St. Peter

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices YSU Realty: (919) 645-2522 - Raleigh, NC

Making Connections to Success in Real Estate

Jeff, Interesting dialog going on - actually came in from a not so complimentary comment out there about us here in the Rain. BUT, I stand with Maureen, we too are obliged to use our companies IDX. That being said, I do see where an address that was search for pulls in an inquiry from the 3rd party sites where our listings are posted. IF I had a choice would I want to have my IDX indexed - you bet. But as Jay states, it's not the placement we look for it's the number of clients raising their hand to use our services.

P.S. - I second you Jeff, Jay is a very straight forward and honest guy!

Feb 01, 2010 01:09 AM

Sam Ingersoll

Media, PA

Justin suspects right about one thing. Bob is correct about some and wrong about another. Jay says Yay! but cares not why.

Imagine.

What would happen in a market where an agent does discover how to use MLS listings in a way that gets "results" and "details" pages - All indexed, All ranked in the #1 or #2 spot on Google, and ALL automatically structured to correctly boost the rank of each other and non-MLS related pages and hyper-local blog posts on the same and other sites? Say they only get 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000 MLS related pages indexed.

Wow.

Do you think that agent (or company) would share those strategies on ActiveRain or even sell them knowing that to do so would kill her advantage as quickly as other savvy folks could copy the strategies?

Or do you suppose that agent would implement them in her market and other markets as quickly as possible to suck up and convert as much traffic as possible?

The SEO strategies to do this are not complicated.

The technology and programming pieces are not complicated either.

The key is thinking a little creatively - outside the box of most folks' speculations.

Feb 01, 2010 10:27 PM

Wayne B. Pruner

Oregon First - Tigard, OR

Tigard Oregon Homes for Sale, Realtor, GRI

Great questions Jeff. This SEO/SEM? stuff gives me a headache!

Feb 02, 2010 11:06 AM

James Salas,

E Realty International - Key Biscayne, FL

CRS

Getting indexed is not as complicated as it sounds. If you have relevant creative content that you update often you will get ranked, The problem is that many don't want to put in the time and instead delegate it away.

Feb 02, 2010 11:42 PM

Anonymous

chris

This has been sitting in my queue for a couple days now so I may be way late too join in. Apologize.

Theresa B's point on Google choosing one page from amongst many duplicates is accurate. The filter is proven by a high profile mortgage blog that feeds its' exact content to many other mortgage blogs... and only it gets indexed.

Contrary to legend, that duplicate filter can be passed... with unique edits. Also proven.

So, feed the IDX forming' posts to a drafts file. Edit posts for actual unique value add ...and avoid being ignored by the engines. And people.

Chris
Kinetic Knowledge

Feb 03, 2010 11:43 AM

#89

Sam Ingersoll

Media, PA

yer not to late Chris...for us fanatics anyway.

You had to give away that tidbit didn't you. It is one way to do it. However, don't get caught.

Most MLSs prevent the addition of other content to the listings page, though they usually let links, menus, and sidebar content slide. They also don't like you do use an "unapproved" version which this might be if it's different then the design shown to them by the idx vendor or yourself.

The way you might be able to do this is if the content you add - I hope you have a ghostwriter for 100,000 listings : ) - would be to sort of Box/Shade-in your own content, or the MLS listing content so it would look very distinct.

Anyway, the companies that are releasing Wordpress plugins gotta be a little careful, lest a clever agent with some programming skills really takes apart the data feed to use it for his own nefarious purposes, or they get whacked for embedding listing content in posts in violation of the MLSs rules.

Feb 03, 2010 11:56 AM

Jenny Durling

L.A. Property Solutions - Los Angeles, CA

For Los Angeles real estate help 213-215-4758

Very interesting post and comments as well. I've been searching for a new IDX provider but now think it would be best to have a custom made solutions so i don't have to frame someone else's. Can anyone direct me to someone who can design an IDX for me? I'm in Los Angeles, if that makes a difference. Thanks!

Feb 03, 2010 03:55 PM

Anonymous

chris frerecks

Hi Sam.

I couldn't resist, but thank you for the good info. I'll pass it along. I guess my bigger question, point, position or whatever bias it is I have is ... 'if you turn on that faucet, how long before you destroy the value you add for your target market?' When are you no longer differentiated to the average trusting consumer? If they are researching providers, are you going to be perceived as knowledge- able or even appealing with rapid fire data- based posts? How long before all subscribers just turn you off? If fed to twitter and facebook and wherever else via feed connection, how long before no one's listening? I understand everyone wants to capture the searchers and this may be an immediate [Google is good at weeding pollution from it's ranking organic search results] competitive fix, but strategically / long term it may have negative effects. To me, your subscribers are a primary long term goal and the best source for a pipeline of leads.

With our folks, and we have a couple that do it for sure, we're certainly going to support this. Whatever they want, but we're also going to lend caution AND discuss the value of long term sustainable brands.

Chris Frerecks

Kinetic Knowledge

Feb 03, 2010 11:10 PM

#92

Anonymous

sam

Ah, but for every one of the hundreds of "what ifs" there is a pretty easy solution - we just figure them out and tick them off. What holds most folks back - even technical ones - is letting what-ifs and chatter stop them from creative problem solving and action, or laying their money on one solution rather than several, or on one development team rather than several. I tell my partners we shouldn't even trust ourselves no matter how sure we are about a strategy and so we always have an opposite or other thing in the works. To the specifics, we'll probably use similar strategies in every market for between 5-10 websites on different servers. The key is to create nonduplicate, changing content around the listings that is optimized for specific keywords - ie foreclosures vs homes vs real estate agents. We just about got this cooked and I'll bet you'll figure it out too. : ). So now I'm turning my attention to innovating a new CRM that actually helps agents convert all those leads from all that traffic. $1000. Equals. 1000 visitors equals 200 leads equals ______ clients. 10? 20? 50? This is where the crm that integrates fully with mls data comes into play.

Feb 04, 2010 12:14 AM

#93

Anonymous

Gilbert Peralta

What are some of the best companies that offer searchable/indexable idx's? Any previously done research or opinions would be most appreciated. Thanks everyone!

Gilbert

gilbertperalta@kw.com

425-750-1056

Feb 16, 2010 03:02 AM

#94

Anonymous

M. Reyn

I would also be interested in the best indexable Idx that offers rss feeds. diverse solutions is not in my area.

Feb 20, 2010 01:01 PM

#95

Suzanne Stephens

Stephens Design - Battle Ground, WA

Real Estate Website Design

Hello, Jeff, from a former Charlotte resident.

I've recently had the dubious pleasure of setting up a dsIDXpress-enabled blog for Phoenix real estate agent Joe Janus. Lemme tell you: going head to head with Monster Blogger (and friend) Jay Thompson is a scary proposition.

Joe and I been pleased that our rather low expectations have been exceeded. Joe isn't getting the huge numbers that Jay gets, and we never really expected that he would. However, I'm seeing him coming out ahead of Jay Thompson in Google search results surprisingly often. Jay agrees with my conjecture that Joe's blog may do well for things like searches in historic districts because his well-ranked regular web site has a wealth of text content on historic neighborhoods. I've posted an article with more details and a screen capture of Joe's Google Analytics page.

The screen capture of Joe's blog stats is enlightening because it will show that almost all the searchers used addresses or MLS numbers to search and eventually reach his blog; these are very different from the "generic" keyphrases with which people find his web site. So, after only three weeks Joe is currently getting around 20 visitors day that his regular web site is missing. These extra visitors are like cream on top of the 150-200 visitors per day that his regular web site gets.

Also, a word of warning: the number of pages that Google Webmaster Tools says it has indexed for Joe's blog -- 5 -- apparently bears no relationship to the number of listings pages that it has indexed. That should be obvious just from looking at Joe's Google Analytics page. I was very frustrated at first because GWT kept telling me that 5 pages had been indexed. I thought there was something wrong with the plug-in. But eventually the numbers of daily visitors just started creeping up while the number of indexed pages indicated in GWT stayed the same.

Is ListingPress.com still around? None of the links on their site work.

Mar 21, 2010 01:57 PM

Suzanne Stephens

Stephens Design - Battle Ground, WA

Real Estate Website Design

Jeff, an update on Joe Janus's dsIDXpress-enabled blog. It is now getting around 100 visitors per day, while his regular web site is getting around 150.

I've recently discovered Myrsol.com, an SC web developer and site host that offers true integrated listings along with a features list that's to die for. I just finished my first site hosted and Myrsol and have totally fallen in love with the system and the guys there as well. Myrsol does a true integrated feed by programming an MLS board's feed directly into the site. My client's site's traffic has jumped already in the first week since the site went live, and he is thrilled to have already gotten some two dozen leads. Great system! I highly recommend it -- and they have already programmed the Charlotte feed.

Jun 30, 2010 11:34 AM

Anonymous

RETS Development Group

I think people might be a little misinformed about what duplicate content actually is...and that's because there is no concrete definition of it.
No two real estate websites are going to display all their listing data in the same way (or at least they shouldn't be), and you shouldn't have MLS content as the only way to establish authority in the search engines.

Duplicate content happens naturally on the web, especially with things such as real estate listings, and search engines understand this. Fortunately, like in most areas, real estate agents are often very reluctant to change. So if no one else in your area has crawlable area listings...get on it!

Oct 17, 2010 12:24 PM

#98

Sam Ingersoll

Media, PA

I use a company that puts RETS feeds in the Amazon Cloud and manages the data for us, so we can build any kind of IDX-Home Search site we want with any features we want using Amazon libraries and many easy programming languages.

(We use php on the yii framework. A WP plugin with all kinds of SEO stuff (not for sale) is our latest project built off our experience with ListingPress before the company shut down.)

Having full access to MLS data can let you create thousands of SEO pages with any SEO structure you want. If you're frustrated that your IDX provider has a crappy URL structure and only repeats the keyphrase/address once:

- Build your own site so the address is in the url at the beginning and repeated in H1, etc...tags several times throughout the page. There aren't any MLS rules against that : ) though there are against some of the things you could try to do.

- Build a macro that turns all your brokerages listings into videos with music or text to speech and then automatically submits the videos to 35 video sharing sites WITH data like addresses, keyphrases like Chicago Homes, placed into the video title, description, etc...

www.RETS2Cloud.com is the company.

RETS2Cloud just manages data which - to do really well so that the data is served up quickly and is stored efficiently - can be tricky.

Here's what you can shoot for...

Most real estate websites turn less than 1% of visitors into leads.

The best Home Search site/Lead Generation companies and internet savvy brokerages like Redfin (probably) capture leads at between 10-15% on average. That's a good ROI if you have a killer CRM and follow-up system.

Our newest search site will have a 20% or more lead capture rate or we'll change them until they do and since we have direct access to the data, we can tweak to our hearts content!

If you talk to an IDX company the only question you need answered is -- what is their lead capture rate from PPC traffic and organic traffic? Well, you might also ask them about their Return rate. If they aren't fibbing, they can show you the analytics.

Good luck! Pursuing the creation of the best Home Search site is my Great White Whale.

- Ahab

Oct 29, 2010 10:49 AM

Miriam Bernstei

Rochester, NY

Jay, google analytics 2009 - January 2010 - am I missing something??? I am also in a state where we are supposed to link to a brokers site, I am in real estate hell.

Jan 27, 2011 11:29 AM

Jay Thompson

Zillow - Seattle, WA

Miriam - I think what you're missing is the date this post (and my comments) were made. Jeff posted this article on Jan 26 *2010*. I commented a couple of days later. So at the time I posted a link to my stats, they were current...

I've got agent friends in Louisiana, so I understand your pain. Hard to believe in this day and age there are still rules in place that are so.... 1975.

Jan 27, 2011 11:43 AM